December 1, 2010

Stupid Celebs and World AIDS Day...

Today is World AIDS Day, a day of sadness and hope. While AIDS is not the news it once was, the disease is still infecting almost three million people each year, and a cure is desperately needed.

With all the wars, scandals, and diseases out there, today is a day to bring AIDS back into the news, to promote awareness and prevention and fundraising. And a bunch of stupid celebrities with good intentions are taking the spotlight. Celebs including Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, and Justin Timberlake went silent on social media today, or died a "twitter death" until their followers donated a million dollars to an AIDS charity.

Great intentions people, but really this is the best you can do? First of all, any one of you can write a check for a million bucks without blinking, so why don't you do that first, before holding your fans up for ransom? Second of all, if you have that much influence, and people are following you so loyally, why not take today and talk about safe sex transmission through drug use, rather than go silent.

Most importantly of all... you want me to pony up dollars so Kim Kardashian and Ryan Seacrest will come back online? Bad strategy, dudes. Way smarter to ask us for cash to keep those two silent.

While on the treadmill at the gym today, I saw Alicia Keys on CNN today talking about this, and thought holy crap, saying she hopes how her fans text in donations, and the women beside me started mumbling "I bought your albums, give them that money!"

The Huffington Post ran an article yesterday about the failure of this campaign, which it attributes mostly to the disconnect between celebs # of twitter followers and the celebs' ability to really influence the action of their followers. Or maybe we just liked the fact that they all shut up for a few days...